


Drunk

by talefeathers



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Best Friends, Cute, Divorce, Drabble, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, One Shot, Sad, Swearing, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-04
Updated: 2013-06-04
Packaged: 2017-12-13 23:15:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/829973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talefeathers/pseuds/talefeathers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Combeferre had never told any of the others about the first night Enjolras ever got drunk, and Enjolras found a way to silently thank him for it every day. The others all assumed that what had happened must have been hilarious and embarrassing, and had come up with several of their own theories about what had gone down.  The truth was the least funny story by a long shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drunk

**Author's Note:**

> Couple of headcanons behind this one: first, Enjolras is a lightweight. I don't even know where that one came from or why, and I couldn't justify it to you if you wanted me to, but that's just what happened in my brain. So, in my particular AU, Enjolras is a lightweight.
> 
> The second involves Enjolras's childhood, and you'll see what it is if you keep reading. Honestly it's a really stupid arbitrary headcanon born of my own stupid issues; usually I write purely for the enjoyment of it, but sometimes I kind of use it as therapy, by which I mean sometimes I shove my own negative feelings and situations onto random unsuspecting (often undeserving) fictional characters in order to make myself feel better. So this one is less for an audience and more for me, I guess, and I understand if that's a turn-off.
> 
> My final note is that, on top of everything else, this is written in kind of an awkward tense, and while I went through it this morning and tried to smooth it out a little bit and make everything a little less clunky, it still doesn't read _quite_ as nicely as I'd like it to, but because it was more therapeutic than anything I figured it didn't have to be perfect.
> 
> I think that's it! Happy reading!

Combeferre had never told any of the others about the first night Enjolras ever got drunk, and Enjolras found a way to silently thank him for it every day. The others all assumed that what had happened must have been hilarious and embarrassing, and had come up with several of their own theories about what had gone down. The truth was the least funny story by a long shot.

Combeferre and Enjolras had been fast friends as freshmen, and, before meeting Feuilly and Bahorel a little later that year, had each been the other’s only real friend at school. Enjolras had been overworking himself, as he was wont to do, and Combeferre had decided that it was time for a mental health day; he’d talked one of the senior philosophy majors into grabbing him some beer, which he’d presented to Enjolras in his dorm room early one Friday evening with a dopey, underage grin.

“C’mon, dude,” he’d said. “Time for a break.”

“You go ahead, I’m —”

“If you keep going like you’re going, you’re gonna burn out before you’re twenty,” Combeferre had cut across in a calm tone that can only be described as motherly. “C’mon, one beer won’t kill you.”

Enjolras had turned big, blue doe eyes on Combeferre then; eyes that would have positively melted the resolve of one of fainter heart, but Combeferre was the immovable object to Enjolras’s unstoppable force.

“One beer,” he’d repeated. “You gonna leave me hanging? C’mon, it’s Friday; you’ve got all weekend to do that.”

With a little bit more coaxing, Enjolras had at last relented. He’d shut his laptop and poured his one beer into his nearly empty stomach. And the demons he’d been trying to outrun by burying himself in his work had caught up with him.

“So, where does this _drive_ of yours come from, Enjolras?” Combeferre had asked through a grin that had become even dopier than before, cracking into his second drink. “What started you on this crusade to save the world?”

Enjolras’s own dopey smile had faded then as his sloshing, tilting mind tried to consider the question seriously.

“I dunno. I’ve always had it, I think. I’ve always been a — a fixer.” The memories had floated up from where he’d buried them, borne on alcohol; he’d felt the guilt pooling in his stomach, burning like acid, but he’d been hopeless to stop it. “My mom and dad they used to — fight a lot. Bad fighting. Throwing shit at each other fighting. And — and I was nine years old when it started getting really bad, but I knew they couldn’t stay together. I didn’t — have any hopes that things might work out; I knew they weren’t going to. I — I _wanted_ them to get a divorce, I begged them to, but even once they finally did, they —”

Combeferre had been on Enjolras’s bed in a second, snapped into something like sobriety, arm curling protectively around his friend. Before that night he would never have considered the possibility of the tall, outspoken, noble-beyond-his-years journalism major crying, but there he was: on the drunker end of tipsy, sniffling like the nine-year-old who’d watched his parents battle it out all those years ago.

“Th-they still — can’t even — _look_ at each other,” he’d wept. Combeferre had pulled his blond head down onto his shoulder and rubbed his back, saying nothing. He could tell that this had been festering (God, for _years)_ and needed to be breathed out. The alcohol had started it; a listening ear would finish it. “They can’t be in the same room without — without going at it again, it — it got _worse,_ in some ways, and — I’ve done everything I can think to do but they’re both just so — _childish_ about it and — and I’m just there in the middle — and they want me to — to pick a side you can just — you can _see_ it and I — I c-c- _can’t!”_

Combeferre had sat solidly by while Enjolras let go of nine years of frustration and self-hatred, staying silent all the while. Eventually his friend’s tears had ebbed back to sniffles, and Combeferre, though he’d only known this guy for a semester, dropped a kiss into his golden curls. He’d been rewarded with a watery laugh.

“Are we having fun yet?” Enjolras had asked, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

“All fun from here on out, I promise,” Combeferre had replied, moving to put a game into Enjolras’s PS2. Before he’d gotten that far, however, Enjolras had stopped him by putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Thank you for listening,” he’d said with a feeble grin. “I’ve never, um — y'know, I’ve never told anyone about that before.”

“I won’t tell anybody,” Combeferre had smiled, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “C’mon, you ever played _Crash Bandicoot_ drunk? It’s a whole new world.”


End file.
